Season 2 |
Episode 2: Unearthing scientific change with Dr. Lisa White
[00:00:00] EMILIA: Hi everyone, welcome to Science Wise, a podcast designed to inspire people embarking on a career in science through conversations that will feel like talking with your wisest auntie.
[00:00:11] RORI: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Rori.
[00:00:15] EMILIA: And I'm Emilia. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming by learning from the experiences of people who came before us.
[00:00:23] RORI: We are honored that Dr. Lisa White is joining us today. Dr. White does science at the very cool intersection of paleontology, oceanography, and geology. She studies fossils of tiny marine invertebrates, and she makes it fun and impactful. Dr. White has always drawn connections between her science research and environmental justice, motivating students to study in the notoriously homogenous field of geology by thinking about mercury levels in fish caught in the San Francisco Bay, or about water access in the California Central Valley.
She comes by it honestly in her family of scholar-activists. Lisa White was a professor of geology at San Francisco State University before she was the associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering there. Now she's emphasizing her powerful science outreach and justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion or JDEI work at the UC Berkeley as the director of education and outreach for the Museum of Paleontology.
She has loads of positions and honors within geological societies and beyond, like being the Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the American Geophysical Union, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Inaugury Bromary Awardee of the Geological Society of America, a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, so close to where she grew up in San Francisco, and she earned the Friend of Darwin Award from the National Center for Science Education.
Phew. Dr. Lisa White is an incredible science communicator and has been featured in the NOVA Making of North America three-part documentary, as well as on Bill Nye's show. Wow. We are so excited to share with you our conversation with the incredible Dr. Lisa White. Before we begin, in response to listener feedback, and thank you listeners, we will be providing content warnings at the start of episodes as appropriate.
In this episode, we discuss abusive and racist dynamics in mentoring and teaching relationships.
We are thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Lisa White today.
[00:02:23] LISA: Thank you for having me. However, I can share my story if it inspires and encourages others. I'm much appreciated to be able to highlight what I do.
[00:02:33] RORI: Oh, well, it's our honor here. So I would love to start with some of your early life and thinking about how you grew up in San Francisco in the '60s and '70s. I'm curious, in that place and time and family, what was your community like growing up?
[00:02:48] LISA: Well, it was very rich and diverse and loaded with very outgoing people. So my family often said, Oh, you know, you're the introvert in a family of extroverts because my sisters were very much into theater and music and cheerleading and were very, very sociable. And I was the quiet, younger sister.
[00:03:12] EMILIA: I was kind of the quiet one too. Now, how did you become interested in science?
[00:03:16] LISA: I didn't realize how much I liked science really until college because in the early years, I was certainly fascinated with museums. Growing up near Golden Gate Park and the California Academy of Sciences, you know, that was my go-to museum.
But given the nature of the '60s San Francisco was very lively, it was so easy to go hear free music, go to the beach, or just Spend time with friends. And at that time, most of our, um, friendship community didn't include any scientists. There were educators. My dad was a professor, my mom a public health nurse, but I was really more drawn to the arts.
And I often share, that I wanted to be the black female Ansel Adams.
[00:04:02] RORI: Yeah, Ansel Adams, famous landscape photographer and environmentalist.
[00:04:06] LISA: Yeah.
[00:04:08] RORI: From San Francisco.
[00:04:09] LISA: Right. So when I entered San Francisco State as an undergrad, I majored in art with a focus on photography.
[00:04:16] RORI: Well, that is a very different start. I think you're the first guest who started off as an art major.
[00:04:21] EMILIA: Wow. So did your interest in photography have anything to do with the cultural influences around you? I'm thinking especially in that area with a lot of the civil rights demonstrations.
[00:04:33] LISA: So our parents would take us, you know, to marches and different civil rights event gatherings. We were often aware of what was going on and, certainly the inequities.
in society. And I didn't quite see how to combine that in a profession at the time. I was just trying to find my way in terms of an area of study. And what I really, uh, valued about my parents is there was never any pressure to go and into their same disciplines, and I recognize that or am mindful of that when I mentor, especially pre-college students, or talk to parents when they share that their child is interested in paleontology, because oftentimes the parent can't see that.
See the pathway to a career and I get that, but I also want to highlight just all the different ways, you know, one can use a degree and just let young people decide what they like and find a way and they might change their mind.
[00:05:35] RORI: Absolutely. I mean, that's a really good point because it's not always that the parents don't want to support their child's chosen career path, but they don't always understand how the Kid could also make a living.
[00:05:47] EMILIA: And it's also hard to get people excited about taking a science path too sometimes, or they get pushed into different fields.
[00:05:54] LISA: Yeah, they're often tracked that way. You know, be a medical doctor, connect with the science that's better paying. So I, I get all that. And we joke a lot in our science and paleontology say we have way more fun than bench scientists.
Like, look, I've been to 35 different countries and when we're out and about, we really. Exploring, uh, the earth and the environment, and there's something so inspiring about the work. When I picked this very different discipline, and, oh, I should add, oh, my parents were very supportive if, you know, I wanted to do art, photography.
And then when I mentioned I felt drawn to science and I was explaining what earth science and geology was, um, my dad. are in psychology, and we really helped establish the field of black psychology and cross-cultural psychology. So we didn't really know that much about the natural sciences. And then my mom, even though her background was in biology and nursing and human health, Earth science was just the furthest science from anyone's mind in my family.
And I remember my dad asking me, so first he asked me if I wanted to go to medical school. Was that in the realm? Oh, you're interested in science. Why aren't you doing this more common science that has an obvious pathway to being a physician and helping people, um, yeah, feel better. So I explained what I was drawn to about earth science.
So he said, okay, well, do your thing. And then a year later he said, well, what about engineering? It's like, he still didn't really accept it.
[00:07:29] RORI: So he really wanted you to have a career path that made sense. And maybe he was hoping to convince you to take a medical path.
[00:07:36] LISA: Yeah. And you know, my mom by this time and, and they, uh, weren't married anymore, but she would just say to him, look, leave her alone.
But that is like the constant, even now, 34 years I've had my PhD and have been a professional. And I still get like, why this profession? Did you ever consider this? So we joke sometimes as our scientists, like, all right, we've got chips, we've got rocks on our shoulders, like whatever. But you wish you were in our profession when you see how much fun we have and all the engaging types of work that we do and the places that we go.
So I'm here to, you know, speak the gospel and share how great it is.
[00:08:17] EMILIA: So going back to when you first declared your major, Lisa, when did you switch from photography to science?
[00:08:24] LISA: Okay. So even before I took that first geology course, I was questioning my choice of major. So photography is expensive. You know, this is way before digital photography.
So we were developing black and white prints and it was very time-intensive, and expensive. And I think wanting to do landscape photography, so this whole inspiration from Ansel Adams, I subscribed to National Geographic, and when I was an undergrad, Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted in the early 80s.
And that made an impression, just being on the West Coast and seeing the power of the Earth and the way it was captured in photographs. And so I remember thinking more intensely about landscape photography and my photography skills, honestly, were not that great for someone who was majoring and wanted this professional path.
So I said, okay, I said, all right, well, maybe I can increase my skills. Capturing landscapes. If I take a geoscience course to learn more about landscapes and the formation of the earth, then I took the geology course and it's often too that, uh, the instructors and professors that teach the general ed or the lower division are especially enthusiastic and they're really are some, some traits that we often say we see in a lot of earth scientists.
You know, we have more fun. We're enthusiastic. Is it the fieldwork? Whatever it is, I got totally bitten by that bug. And at the time there were internship opportunities at the U S Geological Survey, only 30 miles or so from San Francisco. And there were a few of us hired that first summer after we heard about the internships.
So I already had a little peer group. was also taking advantage of this opportunity. So I jumped at the chance and that really set me on the path to seeing what's possible in the profession. And I had female mentors.
[00:10:25] RORI: That's amazing. It's so cool to hear how you got so excited about geoscience. Do you have any stories that you could share with us about your experiences with your mentors?
[00:10:34] LISA: Right in the beginning? And I thought, Oh, if I have a female mentor, I have it made. They're going to understand. Be especially encouraging. Maybe they'll be a little more gentle, you know when it comes to criticism. But it was the polar opposite with one female mentor in particular.
[00:10:53] EMILIA: Oh no. What happened?
[00:10:54] LISA: So this mentor was like, Was very hard driving and there were a number of things I maybe didn't fully understand in her background, especially for women, geoscientists at that time, everything they had to fight for.
They were less than 20 percent of the professional geoscientist population at that time. And one connection back to Mount St. Helens. Uh, this uh, scientist, her fiancé was killed by that blast. So he was the only geologist, Dave Johnston, who was killed. He was photographing the blast. He was a volcanologist and as great as the monitoring was of the blast.
They predicted it, but earth scientists didn't realize that the volcano was going to blow laterally instead of vertically. So, a lot of the ash and debris went in the direction where this volcanologist was standing. So, this woman, this female geologist, only a year or two before, had lost her fiancé, and then all of the things that she had to put up with as a geologist working in Alaska, as a female, And this is where this field expedition was.
The opportunity to go to Alaska the one summer was very intriguing to me and I was excited to go, but the mentor was scary. In fact, she didn't even consider herself a mentor. She was the boss and the supervisor. Well, so a tough love example and doing rigorous. Doing fieldwork in Alaska is quite rigorous.
You're typically being transported by helicopters. We were working in and around Denali National Park where Mount McKinley is the highest point in North America. And so one of the days we were being transported from one area, one ridge, one mountaintop to the next. It's a beautiful clear day and you could really see of the folding relationships, uh, in the rock formations.
Now I'd only had a couple of upper-division geology classes at this point, still making my way through the major. And this woman, Yardi has her master's, she was an expert in these rocks. So she was pointing out some things, the classic, you know, arm waving in geology, we say it's like, Oh, there's a fold-over there.
There's a fault there. And I just couldn't really see what she was talking about, and she kept describing these structural relationships, and I wasn't really getting it. There were so many distractions. We're in this helicopter, there's a lot of noise, I'm getting used to this environment. So she says to me, if you can't see that fold, then get out of geology.
This is the time to get out of geology. I'm like, Oh, I think it to myself now. Again, I am an undergraduate student assistant. I'm trying to learn. You don't explain things that well. This helicopter's whizzing by this fall. So yeah, I think that was just the first week, you know?
[00:13:42] RORI: Wow. Did you actually consider quitting or did you want to keep going in geosciences?
[00:13:47] LISA: Oh yeah, still wanted to do it and things even the next week. It's also funny to me now, but now when we prepare students or first-timers for the field, we have a long packing list. We make it pretty clear what the expectations are. We cover all the risks and the biggest risks. At that time, in fact, a geologist had been mauled by a bear the summer before in the same area where we were working.
So we all had to have gun training and it was a lot of focus on field safety that way, which was important. But the list of other things and the instructions about what to bring, and what not to bring was not very clear. And I often share with students How fortunate they are because we all are. If we want to have our music with us, it's just on our phones.
It's a really easy phone. You have your headset, you're good. But then it was the eighties and I love music. And I know I'd done enough fieldwork in geology that I figured, well, somebody's going to have a guitar, but Hey, I'll just bring some music with me for the downtime. So I had a whole set of cassette tapes. I even brought this, now it wasn't a ghetto blaster, but it was like a little portable tape, tape deck.
I packed it in my suitcase and then when we, we would do the fieldwork that involved the helicopter dropping us off on ridges, we had smaller packs to take for that work. But it was unclear to me because she gave such crazy directions or zero directions, instructions that I packed the cassettes. and the tape deck in the bag that was supposed to be for the rocks for the rock sampling we were going to do along the ridge and it was such a long day of hiking I remember being short of breath and very steep so it's a little frightening and I didn't want to walk fast and so by the end of the day which was delayed because There were just too many things in my pack and I felt like I had to keep it secret that my pack was full of these cassette tapes and this tape deck because I already had a couple strikes because I didn't see the fold or fall and I wasn't keeping up and just go down the list.
So I was like, okay, let's just get to base camp. Let's just get to where the helicopter is picking us up. I'll stuff some more rocks in this pack and hope I don't, you know, crack a cassette tape case, but whatever, I'm getting through this. So we make it before dark to the pickup point for the helicopter.
So unload and. As my pack came off my back, like it opened and all the cassette tape spilled out and the tape played everything. I was so embarrassed. So then I had to hear about that. Oh, why'd you bring all that? You city kids. Oh God. That was the longest day and evening of my life. Cause then I felt really singled out because then more geoscientists that were part of the party were there.
And again, I already didn't fit in and now, you know, felt singled out. Oh, and I'm sure it went through the whole list of stereotypes. So I guess a couple of silver linings. Well, one of my peers who was also in the summer program, she came to Alaska the next week. So I remember just bursting into tears when she came because I thought I'm going to go home.
Like maybe I don't need to stay here for, you know, the second week or two. Maybe this isn't for me. But she talked me off the ledge and we had some time to just bond away from some of the field leaders. And then years after that, when I was a professor at San Francisco State, that geologist reached out to me because she was then a professor at Hunter College and she was having a panel on careers in geoscience and diversity.
So she invited me and I
[00:17:30] EMILIA: Wait, you mean the woman who was actually your supervisor in Alaska?
[00:17:35] LISA: Yeah. The main mentor. Yeah. And I was shocked. And then when I shared that story, I shared part of it. I was trying not to call her all the way out here. She was really trying to bring diverse voices to the discipline. But when I shared part of that story, she said, Oh, I kind of had no idea that you felt that way. So she was, yeah, a little clueless.
[00:17:56] RORI: How did it feel to finally share that story in front of her?
[00:17:59] LISA: Well, it was a relief because one, uh, part of the reason I accepted the offer, because initially I thought, Oh, I don't want to be bothered with her.
But I think, you know, my ego was like, Oh, I need to show this woman, you know, I'm doing things. And she said, Oh yeah, I'm so proud of you. She said it's amazing what you've been able to accomplish. And I wanted you to share your journey. Now she never apologized for being kind of a nut in the field. She seemed confused or didn't remember it in the same way.
It felt like, well, I got some things off my chest and clearly I survived.
[00:18:35] EMILIA: So what made you stay in the geoscience program after what you went through?
[00:18:39] LISA: What made me stay then where they were, there were ups and downs. And honestly, I wondered if I'd done the right thing. It was overwhelming, but I really love the discipline.
[00:18:50] EMILIA: I feel that you've been so lucky to, like, be exposed to the natural world that I will probably never see. I don't think I'll ever fly from this ridge to another ridge.
[00:19:01] RORI: I mean, you talked about how geologists have more fun, and I'm like, Okay, I can see that. I can see that. It's different. It's different from what Emilia and I do.
I'm like, oh yeah. You've mentioned SF State several times. Your parents met at SF State. Would you be willing to share the story?
[00:19:17] LISA: Sure. So in 1951, so my mom's family roots were in Texas and Louisiana. So the classic black family migration in the 40s after World War II. And my grandfather during the war was stationed in Vallejo, Mare Island.
Bay, even though he already had been married to my grandmother, the four kids, my mom's the oldest. So they were still in Texas.
[00:19:42] RORI: So wait, what's your, was he in the military?
[00:19:44] LISA: Yes, he was in the Navy. And after the war ended, he already knew, you know, he was bringing the family to California. So yeah, the war ended, went and got them.
And so my mom was in middle school when they moved to California and then went to San Francisco State in 1951. And my dad, his roots are in the Midwest and he already had relatives in California and he was such a clearly bright young man, and was at the top of his class in this Jesuit school, this Jesuit high school he went to in Minneapolis.
So they really wanted him to have an educational opportunity, higher ed. So they put him on a train, like by himself, to go meet his aunt, who lives in San Francisco, and they enrolled him at San Francisco State. And so in 1951, and my mom, at first she wanted to be a doctor, so she would carry around all these thick medical books.
And she was petite, and so my dad would notice her, where he's like, why are you carrying all those books? So he tried to make an excuse. to talk to her, to help her.
[00:20:46] RORI: Yeah. He was like, who's this studious woman? He was like, I want to meet this woman with all the books.
[00:20:52] LISA: Yeah. Right. So anyway, but yeah, so the San Francisco State connections run deep.
In fact, uh, my parents would often remind me that starting in the fifties. Every decade there was a member of our family on campus in one way or another. So my parents were in the 50s, my dad in the 60s, and then I came in 78 as an undergrad, my uh, middle sister Lynn 76 as an undergrad, and then in the 80s I was 70.
still there as an undergrad. In the 90s, I came as faculty.
[00:21:21] RORI: So what was it like to come back as a faculty? Like you went, you got your degree at Santa Cruz, right? And then you were like, kind of coming home.
[00:21:29] LISA: It was great, but I almost said no, because I knew what I was getting into. So one, I worried. Would the faculty see me as a peer?
Because almost everyone who taught me was still on the faculty and here, you know, as a former student, what was that dynamic going to be like? And it was mostly okay. I mean, they were very welcoming, but it was still hierarchical and I felt like definitely the new kid on the block. I was young, looked young, and I didn't have that much teaching experience.
I knew the teaching load was going to be heavy, and sometimes I just had to put my head down and ignore students who were extra critical and wondering if I was just a part-time hire or if I was really qualified. Oh, I heard it all.
[00:22:14] RORI: How did you hear it?
[00:22:15] LISA: Oh my god. Well,
[00:22:16] RORI: years or through the student evaluations or what?
[00:22:18] LISA: Yes, all of that. So one year I was getting ready for class and I got used to it. to students being shocked when they would see me because remember this is all pre-internet so they couldn't even look me up really, you know, not online anyway. I walked in when it was time to start the class, introduced myself, and talked about the plan, the course plan, everything.
And then I turned my back because either I was getting something from a cabinet, or whatever I was doing, I could hear. A student behind me says, Huh, that's the professor? Ooh, these budget cuts. You don't know who you're gonna have.
It's like, Oh, now come on.
[00:22:57] RORI: Like clearly it's only about race and gender, right?
They haven't even seen you teach yet.
[00:23:02] LISA: I know, right? I barely opened my mouth and I just, I didn't have the energy to confront that student, but I found myself well in that. And subsequent classes, I would spend more time on my background. And I shouldn't have had to do that. I was like, look, you know, my PhD is in this.
I've already done research in Egypt, Israel, and Japan. Plus, you know, my knowledge and love of geoscience.
[00:23:27] RORI: With these lucky students, these lucky students to get to have that, but you, yeah, you felt a need to like, super qualify yourself.
[00:23:33] LISA: Right, but the students of color were almost always happy to see me, but you know.
[00:23:38] EMILIA: Did it change with time?
[00:23:39] LISA: Yeah, through the years and the, you know, 22 years I was there, I became, yeah, very comfortable in the job. I think some of it was, well, students did, I think, mistreat me a bit, but I, I was less confident than in those early years. And so I've always felt a little tense in the early years.
Gradually it just got better and I certainly became more comfortable in the job and had lots of opportunities for students as well. And opportunities for students to get to know me, you know, outside of the class.
[00:24:14] EMILIA: What did you love about being a faculty member?
[00:24:17] LISA: Well, there were quite a number of things.
You know, I'm quite sociable and, and I love being part of a network of professionals who are like the core of the university. I loved just the energy of being a faculty member in SF State. We're activist faculty and everything. So I found myself channeling my dad and just making a difference. Like I loved being able to have these leadership positions through time and feel like, you know, you're making change and.
I started getting quite a number of NSF grants to, uh, really support broadening participation in geoscience and bringing communities together. It was all the things I loved, working across disciplines and collaborative teams and trying to really rethink, again, what a major degree program should be like.
[00:25:09] EMILIA: So what made you seek out this new role?
[00:25:12] LISA: Well, they came and got me. I was
They recruited me.
[00:25:15] RORI: Oh, yeah, they did.
[00:25:17] LISA: Yeah. And honestly, I was starting on an administrative trajectory that I wasn't sure I wanted to be on for too much longer.
[00:25:26] RORI: Yeah, like, you were associate dean.
[00:25:27] LISA: Yeah. Four years as associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering, and I'd done two years as associate dean of the graduate division.
Before science engineering associate team position, and I was still teaching. I was crazy teaching undergrad, still managing my grant. So something had to give, and it's like, okay, I can't do this forever. If I still want to teach, then maybe I should go back to the faculty. Or if I'm feeling energized in these leadership positions, should I be seeking a Dean position?
And neither one seemed to work. seemed very appealing at that time. So when Berkeley came calling, they had to ask a few times, but you know, in the end, I am a risk taker and I thought, why not? I can be in a research one environment. I don't have to have the pressures. So I suppose coming as staff and not faculty, it's just a different kind of job and expectation, but I get to be around all the research and support it through broader impacts. supporting graduate students who are interested in science communication and who maybe want a career path similar to what I had at a teaching university. So all of
that.
[00:26:34] RORI: And you get to expand all the programs you've been running too. You get more energy there, but no, but not the teaching grind.
[00:26:40] LISA: Oh yeah.
Not the teaching. And I do feel like it's made me a better scientist. Well, and educators, because again, I'm working across a lot of disciplines now, trying to understand the science of others, especially life scientists. Because at first, I was like, I don't know, man. I gotta have it made over here. And things then that angered me, you know, still frustrate me now.
Um, the demographics of the undergraduates have obviously changed over the years. When my oldest sister was an undergraduate, that was before Prop 209. Although, She earned her place anyway by how accomplished she was. But yeah, they're only, I think it's 3 percent Black students now, which is unfortunate.
[00:27:23] EMILIA: I mean, I know that Berkeley has the lowest numbers of all the UCs.
[00:27:26] LISA: I know. And I'm, I'm so inspired by the growing Latino population. So that is a bright spot, but I've had Black students come to me and I'm not even a faculty member, but. Once I do meet a mentor, they sometimes feel unwelcome here, which is unfortunate. Yeah, just so few of them. Berkeley always has a plan and they're doing things with pre-college students and trying to get the African American alumni involved.
[00:27:51] RORI: I mean, you continue to do so much to change this on a field level. I looked up some of the programs that you have run over decades.
[00:27:58] EMILIA: And there's so many. Oh my God.
[00:28:00] RORI: So many. So there's like reaching out to communities and San Francisco, SF Rock. How do you come up with your acronyms? They're very good. You have very good program acronyms.
[00:28:10] LISA: And it drives me crazy just the acronym-driven times we live in. And I've been fortunate just, uh, working with others who are very much motivated to have the best acronym. But I've come up with a few myself.
[00:28:24] RORI: So collaborating with people is the answer. Some of these are classroom education programs, but a lot of them are non-classroom programs.
kind of educational opportunities. So what makes those non-classroom opportunities
important?
[00:28:37] LISA: Well, if I can share an example from my most recent one, STEMSEED, again, the acronyms, it's STEM Student Experiences Aboard Ships. So with NSF funding, we're partnering with the academic fleet of ships. So the dozen or so, uh, research universities.
in the states that have oceanographic institutions. So from Scripps Institution of Oceanography to Woods Hole to University of Washington and Columbia, Lamont Doherty. So all those large, uh, ocean science labs typically have a research vessel. And, uh, the vessels often are on loan from like, uh, NOAA. So we're able to
[00:29:21] EMILIA: like, go out and do research.
[00:29:23] LISA: Yep.
[00:29:23] EMILIA: Wow.
[00:29:24] LISA: So the ships are always moving around. Sometimes they have full parties on board, research scientists that are monitoring ocean currents or, uh, measuring, The chemistry of seawater, trying to monitor global change. And if there are empty bursts on the ship, then we're able to send students. They're typically shorter cruises.
So seven to 10 days as opposed to a whole month, but it's such a great. immersive experience and we welcome all majors. We say STEM curious is like the basic requirement. You might be majoring in journalism or
business.
[00:30:01] EMILIA: How do you advertise these things? Like do you photo people's classes?
[00:30:05] LISA: Well, so at conferences, you know, we have boosted and do recruiting and within the SACNAS network, so the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
So we're really trying to grow, you know, our network and footprint, um, within societies that cater to students of color. There are nearly 150 students. that have sailed over the seven years.
[00:30:32] RORI: I've designed some student programs. That's something that it's an important thing to me. And I'm curious when you're designing or joining a team on an existing program, like what do you think about?
[00:30:42] LISA: So with all of these years now of experience, I often approach new programs now with, okay, what haven't we done? What can we do differently or better, because it's not always working. I mean, if it's still the same percentage of students of color in geoscience. is when I started. So we're just, yeah, really trying to engage people differently, have conversations outside of the traditional disciplines, talking to social scientists to just help us take a fresh look at how we recruit.
Just really addressing the culture.
[00:31:19] RORI: Yeah. Getting those outside perspectives.
[00:31:22] LISA: I realize now that When I mentor students, whether it's in the field or not, I want to always think about their comfort level. When I was running SFROC, so Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco, so these great opportunities for high school students.
in San Francisco and in the Bay Area to come to the SF State campus, do lab-based research, come out in the field with us, and get to know college students. We begin to introduce students to earth science opportunities outside of the regional areas where they live. So these were these big field trips to Yellowstone and, The parks of Southern Utah and the Grand Canyon, you name it, we were on a mission to have these students see some geology.
[00:32:12] RORI: And these are like SF high school students?
[00:32:15] LISA: Yes. So I bring the SF high school students and then we'd meet up with high school students from Texas, with students from New Orleans. So we'd all meet. In this particular year that I'll share this experience, we met in Utah and then we went to parks from there.
So, I had a whole trip mapped out on the way there. We're going to go through Idaho, and Wyoming. We're going to see all these classic spots. And I had shared with the parents and family members where we were taking and everything we were going to do. We had a guidebook for them that really broke everything down.
So I thought, you know, in plain terms, but we get to one of these spots, a river has cut into these dark rocks and it's like very dramatic. What you see there's a cliff and, um, It's kind of a, what geologists would call like a classic area where you have volcanic rocks being cut by a river. Okay. So, so excited to show students this stop.
So, we got there and, uh, one of the students asked me, was it real? Like of what we were seeing, is this real? And at first, I didn't even get the question. I was like, what? And then I found myself getting angry. It's like, oh, we spent all this NSF money. I did all this prep, gave you a guidebook, and showed your slides.
And we get to this outcrop and you're asking me if this is real. I'm like, what do you mean? Like a Disneyland where there are fake rocks. And so once I calmed down and the student explained, he said, well, I haven't seen really anything on this scale. I'm like, yes, that's right. Because nature will blow your mind.
I mean, it blew my mind. This is why we do this work. And I realized, well, a few lessons there for me as a professional, as a professor, as an instructor, is students don't always see things the way you do. It should go without saying, but it was very revealing that day. It's like, okay, so no, no matter how much I put in the guidebook, If you have not seen crazy landscapes like that, why wouldn't you ask if nature did this or not?
So it was a real opportunity to just talk about geologic time and the slowness of processes and how rocks can get carved that way, but it did make me rethink what we share with students before we go and just giving them more opportunities to sketch and comment and give feedback. And even though I found myself getting a little frustrated when the students first asked me that question.
I never put them down. I never responded in a way that the student didn't want to ask more questions because I never wanted to do that as a mentor. So unlike the mentor I had, that wasn't a big deal. But you know, it's like, no, you don't put anybody down. You try to meet somebody where they are. And the point of these programs anyway, is to introduce earth science on all these scales.
[00:35:03] RORI: Right, like the student clearly got inspired, like they couldn't believe that it was real. Your program was clearly effective by that question and I, yeah, it makes sense in those moments you gotta slow it down.
[00:35:15] EMILIA: I think it takes a lot of stamina and everything that you do I think takes stamina. So much work and it's like Rori mentioned earlier, it feels like an uphill battle.
Like what do you do to reinvigorate yourself?
[00:35:28] LISA: Talk to friends. We have a mean text thread going on with a group of about eight friends and now and we're all around the same age and in leadership roles now. One person on the text thread is an NSF program officer. Another one is So, we are the change makers, but we still need to vent.
[00:35:48] EMILIA: So, we want to ask you, if you could revise and resubmit something about a past experience or go a different pathway, what would that be?
[00:35:57] LISA: Um, so the kinds of fossils I study, diatoms, fossil plants, they make up a crazy volume of rocks. that we see even in California, so much that there's a quarry in Santa Barbara County of diatomite.
And to me, the fossils in them are terrific clues to past climate and ocean change. So in my training as a PhD student, I was mostly working with them on land, but there came an opportunity to go out on a major research expedition in the Japan Sea in the Pacific Ocean today. So here was this opportunity to go for two months.
on a research vessel where the seafloor sediments and then we bring them up and there are these labs on the ship where people like me look at fossils and then people that do geochemistry have their lab. So it's a great working environment. I was so excited to go. I knew there would be a percentage of scientists.
from Japan, and one of the leading diatom specialists from Japan was someone I was going to be on the ship with. So super excited to be part of this team, but he treated me pretty badly, not really responding to my suggestions. I didn't know what was going on. So it got to the point where. He was saying to others, because I had my spies, my friend who was a Japanese graduate student, I was like, what did he say?
What's he saying about me? I was doing like the secretary work because he wouldn't type up his reports and all this burden. came to me and I didn't really know how to speak up at that time and just say like I maybe I should have asked the graduate student to help mediate or something so I could have a conversation about what I was thinking but I was just trying to keep up with the work on the ship and this Japanese scientist was friends with my advisor so I took advice from someone whose personality was very different from mine this other graduate student who was on the ship she was watching the Diamant you And she said, like, just don't give him any more samples, or when we get back off the cruise, either, yeah, don't speak to him, or She was just, like, taking the hard line.
Either you need to tell him off, or just cut it off. And that wasn't my nature. I sh My nature would I have been to ask my advisor, will you help me just communicate a little bit better with this man so we can work together? But I listened and just kind of cut off the communication and collaborative work.
So then of course this senior scientist didn't put me on any of the research papers and yeah, kind of bad-mouthed me a little bit even more. And then it was just too late to repair the relationship and it just, it bothered me for a lot of years. I, of course. was frustrated by the way I was being treated, and it certainly wasn't my fault, but for someone early in their career, it's like, Oh, I would have liked to have been on a research paper with him.
[00:38:57] RORI: It would have made a big difference.
[00:38:59] LISA: Yeah. So that just haunted me for a little bit, even though I had plenty of professional accomplishments that were being counted towards promotion and tenure. When I got to SF State, but, uh, there were some of the lessons learned there were to just be careful of advice you get from others.
[00:39:19] RORI: Oh, yeah.
[00:39:20] LISA: You know, just be true to yourself about how you handle a conflict. And most times I clearly move forward and try not to overthink. But if I could do one thing over I would have figured out early on in my career, like a way to just, um, try to mitigate a situation in, um, but by a method that is comfortable to me.
[00:39:44] RORI: I mean, this has been such a pleasure, Dr. White, Lisa White. Thank you so much. For sharing your wisdom, for sharing your stories with us today.
[00:39:55] EMILIA: Yeah.
[00:39:55] RORI: We're very grateful.
[00:39:57] LISA: You are welcome. My pleasure.
[00:40:00] EMILIA: And your stories are very inspiring and I think are going to be really motivating to a lot, a lot of our listeners and to us.
[00:40:07] LISA: I appreciate you say this.
[00:40:09] RORI: Absolutely. They're going to echo in my head too.
[00:40:12] EMILIA: Dr. Lisa White is a force. She overcame much more than she should have had to. as she navigated racist and misogynist interactions as a student and as faculty. We hope you feel motivated and inspired by the way she persisted and the change she has created.
For more discussion, check out the bonus episode.
[00:40:32] RORI: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with someone.
[00:40:36] EMILIA: You can also support this program by writing a kind review if your listening platform allows
it.
[00:40:42] RORI: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, and sound engineering by Keegan Stromberg.
Special thanks to Dr. Lisa White. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfs.
[00:00:11] RORI: Who just so happens to be a badass scientist. I'm Rori.
[00:00:15] EMILIA: And I'm Emilia. We're two scientists on a mission to make the world of science more welcoming by learning from the experiences of people who came before us.
[00:00:23] RORI: We are honored that Dr. Lisa White is joining us today. Dr. White does science at the very cool intersection of paleontology, oceanography, and geology. She studies fossils of tiny marine invertebrates, and she makes it fun and impactful. Dr. White has always drawn connections between her science research and environmental justice, motivating students to study in the notoriously homogenous field of geology by thinking about mercury levels in fish caught in the San Francisco Bay, or about water access in the California Central Valley.
She comes by it honestly in her family of scholar-activists. Lisa White was a professor of geology at San Francisco State University before she was the associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering there. Now she's emphasizing her powerful science outreach and justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion or JDEI work at the UC Berkeley as the director of education and outreach for the Museum of Paleontology.
She has loads of positions and honors within geological societies and beyond, like being the Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the American Geophysical Union, a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the Inaugury Bromary Awardee of the Geological Society of America, a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, so close to where she grew up in San Francisco, and she earned the Friend of Darwin Award from the National Center for Science Education.
Phew. Dr. Lisa White is an incredible science communicator and has been featured in the NOVA Making of North America three-part documentary, as well as on Bill Nye's show. Wow. We are so excited to share with you our conversation with the incredible Dr. Lisa White. Before we begin, in response to listener feedback, and thank you listeners, we will be providing content warnings at the start of episodes as appropriate.
In this episode, we discuss abusive and racist dynamics in mentoring and teaching relationships.
We are thrilled to have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Lisa White today.
[00:02:23] LISA: Thank you for having me. However, I can share my story if it inspires and encourages others. I'm much appreciated to be able to highlight what I do.
[00:02:33] RORI: Oh, well, it's our honor here. So I would love to start with some of your early life and thinking about how you grew up in San Francisco in the '60s and '70s. I'm curious, in that place and time and family, what was your community like growing up?
[00:02:48] LISA: Well, it was very rich and diverse and loaded with very outgoing people. So my family often said, Oh, you know, you're the introvert in a family of extroverts because my sisters were very much into theater and music and cheerleading and were very, very sociable. And I was the quiet, younger sister.
[00:03:12] EMILIA: I was kind of the quiet one too. Now, how did you become interested in science?
[00:03:16] LISA: I didn't realize how much I liked science really until college because in the early years, I was certainly fascinated with museums. Growing up near Golden Gate Park and the California Academy of Sciences, you know, that was my go-to museum.
But given the nature of the '60s San Francisco was very lively, it was so easy to go hear free music, go to the beach, or just Spend time with friends. And at that time, most of our, um, friendship community didn't include any scientists. There were educators. My dad was a professor, my mom a public health nurse, but I was really more drawn to the arts.
And I often share, that I wanted to be the black female Ansel Adams.
[00:04:02] RORI: Yeah, Ansel Adams, famous landscape photographer and environmentalist.
[00:04:06] LISA: Yeah.
[00:04:08] RORI: From San Francisco.
[00:04:09] LISA: Right. So when I entered San Francisco State as an undergrad, I majored in art with a focus on photography.
[00:04:16] RORI: Well, that is a very different start. I think you're the first guest who started off as an art major.
[00:04:21] EMILIA: Wow. So did your interest in photography have anything to do with the cultural influences around you? I'm thinking especially in that area with a lot of the civil rights demonstrations.
[00:04:33] LISA: So our parents would take us, you know, to marches and different civil rights event gatherings. We were often aware of what was going on and, certainly the inequities.
in society. And I didn't quite see how to combine that in a profession at the time. I was just trying to find my way in terms of an area of study. And what I really, uh, valued about my parents is there was never any pressure to go and into their same disciplines, and I recognize that or am mindful of that when I mentor, especially pre-college students, or talk to parents when they share that their child is interested in paleontology, because oftentimes the parent can't see that.
See the pathway to a career and I get that, but I also want to highlight just all the different ways, you know, one can use a degree and just let young people decide what they like and find a way and they might change their mind.
[00:05:35] RORI: Absolutely. I mean, that's a really good point because it's not always that the parents don't want to support their child's chosen career path, but they don't always understand how the Kid could also make a living.
[00:05:47] EMILIA: And it's also hard to get people excited about taking a science path too sometimes, or they get pushed into different fields.
[00:05:54] LISA: Yeah, they're often tracked that way. You know, be a medical doctor, connect with the science that's better paying. So I, I get all that. And we joke a lot in our science and paleontology say we have way more fun than bench scientists.
Like, look, I've been to 35 different countries and when we're out and about, we really. Exploring, uh, the earth and the environment, and there's something so inspiring about the work. When I picked this very different discipline, and, oh, I should add, oh, my parents were very supportive if, you know, I wanted to do art, photography.
And then when I mentioned I felt drawn to science and I was explaining what earth science and geology was, um, my dad. are in psychology, and we really helped establish the field of black psychology and cross-cultural psychology. So we didn't really know that much about the natural sciences. And then my mom, even though her background was in biology and nursing and human health, Earth science was just the furthest science from anyone's mind in my family.
And I remember my dad asking me, so first he asked me if I wanted to go to medical school. Was that in the realm? Oh, you're interested in science. Why aren't you doing this more common science that has an obvious pathway to being a physician and helping people, um, yeah, feel better. So I explained what I was drawn to about earth science.
So he said, okay, well, do your thing. And then a year later he said, well, what about engineering? It's like, he still didn't really accept it.
[00:07:29] RORI: So he really wanted you to have a career path that made sense. And maybe he was hoping to convince you to take a medical path.
[00:07:36] LISA: Yeah. And you know, my mom by this time and, and they, uh, weren't married anymore, but she would just say to him, look, leave her alone.
But that is like the constant, even now, 34 years I've had my PhD and have been a professional. And I still get like, why this profession? Did you ever consider this? So we joke sometimes as our scientists, like, all right, we've got chips, we've got rocks on our shoulders, like whatever. But you wish you were in our profession when you see how much fun we have and all the engaging types of work that we do and the places that we go.
So I'm here to, you know, speak the gospel and share how great it is.
[00:08:17] EMILIA: So going back to when you first declared your major, Lisa, when did you switch from photography to science?
[00:08:24] LISA: Okay. So even before I took that first geology course, I was questioning my choice of major. So photography is expensive. You know, this is way before digital photography.
So we were developing black and white prints and it was very time-intensive, and expensive. And I think wanting to do landscape photography, so this whole inspiration from Ansel Adams, I subscribed to National Geographic, and when I was an undergrad, Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted in the early 80s.
And that made an impression, just being on the West Coast and seeing the power of the Earth and the way it was captured in photographs. And so I remember thinking more intensely about landscape photography and my photography skills, honestly, were not that great for someone who was majoring and wanted this professional path.
So I said, okay, I said, all right, well, maybe I can increase my skills. Capturing landscapes. If I take a geoscience course to learn more about landscapes and the formation of the earth, then I took the geology course and it's often too that, uh, the instructors and professors that teach the general ed or the lower division are especially enthusiastic and they're really are some, some traits that we often say we see in a lot of earth scientists.
You know, we have more fun. We're enthusiastic. Is it the fieldwork? Whatever it is, I got totally bitten by that bug. And at the time there were internship opportunities at the U S Geological Survey, only 30 miles or so from San Francisco. And there were a few of us hired that first summer after we heard about the internships.
So I already had a little peer group. was also taking advantage of this opportunity. So I jumped at the chance and that really set me on the path to seeing what's possible in the profession. And I had female mentors.
[00:10:25] RORI: That's amazing. It's so cool to hear how you got so excited about geoscience. Do you have any stories that you could share with us about your experiences with your mentors?
[00:10:34] LISA: Right in the beginning? And I thought, Oh, if I have a female mentor, I have it made. They're going to understand. Be especially encouraging. Maybe they'll be a little more gentle, you know when it comes to criticism. But it was the polar opposite with one female mentor in particular.
[00:10:53] EMILIA: Oh no. What happened?
[00:10:54] LISA: So this mentor was like, Was very hard driving and there were a number of things I maybe didn't fully understand in her background, especially for women, geoscientists at that time, everything they had to fight for.
They were less than 20 percent of the professional geoscientist population at that time. And one connection back to Mount St. Helens. Uh, this uh, scientist, her fiancé was killed by that blast. So he was the only geologist, Dave Johnston, who was killed. He was photographing the blast. He was a volcanologist and as great as the monitoring was of the blast.
They predicted it, but earth scientists didn't realize that the volcano was going to blow laterally instead of vertically. So, a lot of the ash and debris went in the direction where this volcanologist was standing. So, this woman, this female geologist, only a year or two before, had lost her fiancé, and then all of the things that she had to put up with as a geologist working in Alaska, as a female, And this is where this field expedition was.
The opportunity to go to Alaska the one summer was very intriguing to me and I was excited to go, but the mentor was scary. In fact, she didn't even consider herself a mentor. She was the boss and the supervisor. Well, so a tough love example and doing rigorous. Doing fieldwork in Alaska is quite rigorous.
You're typically being transported by helicopters. We were working in and around Denali National Park where Mount McKinley is the highest point in North America. And so one of the days we were being transported from one area, one ridge, one mountaintop to the next. It's a beautiful clear day and you could really see of the folding relationships, uh, in the rock formations.
Now I'd only had a couple of upper-division geology classes at this point, still making my way through the major. And this woman, Yardi has her master's, she was an expert in these rocks. So she was pointing out some things, the classic, you know, arm waving in geology, we say it's like, Oh, there's a fold-over there.
There's a fault there. And I just couldn't really see what she was talking about, and she kept describing these structural relationships, and I wasn't really getting it. There were so many distractions. We're in this helicopter, there's a lot of noise, I'm getting used to this environment. So she says to me, if you can't see that fold, then get out of geology.
This is the time to get out of geology. I'm like, Oh, I think it to myself now. Again, I am an undergraduate student assistant. I'm trying to learn. You don't explain things that well. This helicopter's whizzing by this fall. So yeah, I think that was just the first week, you know?
[00:13:42] RORI: Wow. Did you actually consider quitting or did you want to keep going in geosciences?
[00:13:47] LISA: Oh yeah, still wanted to do it and things even the next week. It's also funny to me now, but now when we prepare students or first-timers for the field, we have a long packing list. We make it pretty clear what the expectations are. We cover all the risks and the biggest risks. At that time, in fact, a geologist had been mauled by a bear the summer before in the same area where we were working.
So we all had to have gun training and it was a lot of focus on field safety that way, which was important. But the list of other things and the instructions about what to bring, and what not to bring was not very clear. And I often share with students How fortunate they are because we all are. If we want to have our music with us, it's just on our phones.
It's a really easy phone. You have your headset, you're good. But then it was the eighties and I love music. And I know I'd done enough fieldwork in geology that I figured, well, somebody's going to have a guitar, but Hey, I'll just bring some music with me for the downtime. So I had a whole set of cassette tapes. I even brought this, now it wasn't a ghetto blaster, but it was like a little portable tape, tape deck.
I packed it in my suitcase and then when we, we would do the fieldwork that involved the helicopter dropping us off on ridges, we had smaller packs to take for that work. But it was unclear to me because she gave such crazy directions or zero directions, instructions that I packed the cassettes. and the tape deck in the bag that was supposed to be for the rocks for the rock sampling we were going to do along the ridge and it was such a long day of hiking I remember being short of breath and very steep so it's a little frightening and I didn't want to walk fast and so by the end of the day which was delayed because There were just too many things in my pack and I felt like I had to keep it secret that my pack was full of these cassette tapes and this tape deck because I already had a couple strikes because I didn't see the fold or fall and I wasn't keeping up and just go down the list.
So I was like, okay, let's just get to base camp. Let's just get to where the helicopter is picking us up. I'll stuff some more rocks in this pack and hope I don't, you know, crack a cassette tape case, but whatever, I'm getting through this. So we make it before dark to the pickup point for the helicopter.
So unload and. As my pack came off my back, like it opened and all the cassette tape spilled out and the tape played everything. I was so embarrassed. So then I had to hear about that. Oh, why'd you bring all that? You city kids. Oh God. That was the longest day and evening of my life. Cause then I felt really singled out because then more geoscientists that were part of the party were there.
And again, I already didn't fit in and now, you know, felt singled out. Oh, and I'm sure it went through the whole list of stereotypes. So I guess a couple of silver linings. Well, one of my peers who was also in the summer program, she came to Alaska the next week. So I remember just bursting into tears when she came because I thought I'm going to go home.
Like maybe I don't need to stay here for, you know, the second week or two. Maybe this isn't for me. But she talked me off the ledge and we had some time to just bond away from some of the field leaders. And then years after that, when I was a professor at San Francisco State, that geologist reached out to me because she was then a professor at Hunter College and she was having a panel on careers in geoscience and diversity.
So she invited me and I
[00:17:30] EMILIA: Wait, you mean the woman who was actually your supervisor in Alaska?
[00:17:35] LISA: Yeah. The main mentor. Yeah. And I was shocked. And then when I shared that story, I shared part of it. I was trying not to call her all the way out here. She was really trying to bring diverse voices to the discipline. But when I shared part of that story, she said, Oh, I kind of had no idea that you felt that way. So she was, yeah, a little clueless.
[00:17:56] RORI: How did it feel to finally share that story in front of her?
[00:17:59] LISA: Well, it was a relief because one, uh, part of the reason I accepted the offer, because initially I thought, Oh, I don't want to be bothered with her.
But I think, you know, my ego was like, Oh, I need to show this woman, you know, I'm doing things. And she said, Oh yeah, I'm so proud of you. She said it's amazing what you've been able to accomplish. And I wanted you to share your journey. Now she never apologized for being kind of a nut in the field. She seemed confused or didn't remember it in the same way.
It felt like, well, I got some things off my chest and clearly I survived.
[00:18:35] EMILIA: So what made you stay in the geoscience program after what you went through?
[00:18:39] LISA: What made me stay then where they were, there were ups and downs. And honestly, I wondered if I'd done the right thing. It was overwhelming, but I really love the discipline.
[00:18:50] EMILIA: I feel that you've been so lucky to, like, be exposed to the natural world that I will probably never see. I don't think I'll ever fly from this ridge to another ridge.
[00:19:01] RORI: I mean, you talked about how geologists have more fun, and I'm like, Okay, I can see that. I can see that. It's different. It's different from what Emilia and I do.
I'm like, oh yeah. You've mentioned SF State several times. Your parents met at SF State. Would you be willing to share the story?
[00:19:17] LISA: Sure. So in 1951, so my mom's family roots were in Texas and Louisiana. So the classic black family migration in the 40s after World War II. And my grandfather during the war was stationed in Vallejo, Mare Island.
Bay, even though he already had been married to my grandmother, the four kids, my mom's the oldest. So they were still in Texas.
[00:19:42] RORI: So wait, what's your, was he in the military?
[00:19:44] LISA: Yes, he was in the Navy. And after the war ended, he already knew, you know, he was bringing the family to California. So yeah, the war ended, went and got them.
And so my mom was in middle school when they moved to California and then went to San Francisco State in 1951. And my dad, his roots are in the Midwest and he already had relatives in California and he was such a clearly bright young man, and was at the top of his class in this Jesuit school, this Jesuit high school he went to in Minneapolis.
So they really wanted him to have an educational opportunity, higher ed. So they put him on a train, like by himself, to go meet his aunt, who lives in San Francisco, and they enrolled him at San Francisco State. And so in 1951, and my mom, at first she wanted to be a doctor, so she would carry around all these thick medical books.
And she was petite, and so my dad would notice her, where he's like, why are you carrying all those books? So he tried to make an excuse. to talk to her, to help her.
[00:20:46] RORI: Yeah. He was like, who's this studious woman? He was like, I want to meet this woman with all the books.
[00:20:52] LISA: Yeah. Right. So anyway, but yeah, so the San Francisco State connections run deep.
In fact, uh, my parents would often remind me that starting in the fifties. Every decade there was a member of our family on campus in one way or another. So my parents were in the 50s, my dad in the 60s, and then I came in 78 as an undergrad, my uh, middle sister Lynn 76 as an undergrad, and then in the 80s I was 70.
still there as an undergrad. In the 90s, I came as faculty.
[00:21:21] RORI: So what was it like to come back as a faculty? Like you went, you got your degree at Santa Cruz, right? And then you were like, kind of coming home.
[00:21:29] LISA: It was great, but I almost said no, because I knew what I was getting into. So one, I worried. Would the faculty see me as a peer?
Because almost everyone who taught me was still on the faculty and here, you know, as a former student, what was that dynamic going to be like? And it was mostly okay. I mean, they were very welcoming, but it was still hierarchical and I felt like definitely the new kid on the block. I was young, looked young, and I didn't have that much teaching experience.
I knew the teaching load was going to be heavy, and sometimes I just had to put my head down and ignore students who were extra critical and wondering if I was just a part-time hire or if I was really qualified. Oh, I heard it all.
[00:22:14] RORI: How did you hear it?
[00:22:15] LISA: Oh my god. Well,
[00:22:16] RORI: years or through the student evaluations or what?
[00:22:18] LISA: Yes, all of that. So one year I was getting ready for class and I got used to it. to students being shocked when they would see me because remember this is all pre-internet so they couldn't even look me up really, you know, not online anyway. I walked in when it was time to start the class, introduced myself, and talked about the plan, the course plan, everything.
And then I turned my back because either I was getting something from a cabinet, or whatever I was doing, I could hear. A student behind me says, Huh, that's the professor? Ooh, these budget cuts. You don't know who you're gonna have.
It's like, Oh, now come on.
[00:22:57] RORI: Like clearly it's only about race and gender, right?
They haven't even seen you teach yet.
[00:23:02] LISA: I know, right? I barely opened my mouth and I just, I didn't have the energy to confront that student, but I found myself well in that. And subsequent classes, I would spend more time on my background. And I shouldn't have had to do that. I was like, look, you know, my PhD is in this.
I've already done research in Egypt, Israel, and Japan. Plus, you know, my knowledge and love of geoscience.
[00:23:27] RORI: With these lucky students, these lucky students to get to have that, but you, yeah, you felt a need to like, super qualify yourself.
[00:23:33] LISA: Right, but the students of color were almost always happy to see me, but you know.
[00:23:38] EMILIA: Did it change with time?
[00:23:39] LISA: Yeah, through the years and the, you know, 22 years I was there, I became, yeah, very comfortable in the job. I think some of it was, well, students did, I think, mistreat me a bit, but I, I was less confident than in those early years. And so I've always felt a little tense in the early years.
Gradually it just got better and I certainly became more comfortable in the job and had lots of opportunities for students as well. And opportunities for students to get to know me, you know, outside of the class.
[00:24:14] EMILIA: What did you love about being a faculty member?
[00:24:17] LISA: Well, there were quite a number of things.
You know, I'm quite sociable and, and I love being part of a network of professionals who are like the core of the university. I loved just the energy of being a faculty member in SF State. We're activist faculty and everything. So I found myself channeling my dad and just making a difference. Like I loved being able to have these leadership positions through time and feel like, you know, you're making change and.
I started getting quite a number of NSF grants to, uh, really support broadening participation in geoscience and bringing communities together. It was all the things I loved, working across disciplines and collaborative teams and trying to really rethink, again, what a major degree program should be like.
[00:25:09] EMILIA: So what made you seek out this new role?
[00:25:12] LISA: Well, they came and got me. I was
They recruited me.
[00:25:15] RORI: Oh, yeah, they did.
[00:25:17] LISA: Yeah. And honestly, I was starting on an administrative trajectory that I wasn't sure I wanted to be on for too much longer.
[00:25:26] RORI: Yeah, like, you were associate dean.
[00:25:27] LISA: Yeah. Four years as associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering, and I'd done two years as associate dean of the graduate division.
Before science engineering associate team position, and I was still teaching. I was crazy teaching undergrad, still managing my grant. So something had to give, and it's like, okay, I can't do this forever. If I still want to teach, then maybe I should go back to the faculty. Or if I'm feeling energized in these leadership positions, should I be seeking a Dean position?
And neither one seemed to work. seemed very appealing at that time. So when Berkeley came calling, they had to ask a few times, but you know, in the end, I am a risk taker and I thought, why not? I can be in a research one environment. I don't have to have the pressures. So I suppose coming as staff and not faculty, it's just a different kind of job and expectation, but I get to be around all the research and support it through broader impacts. supporting graduate students who are interested in science communication and who maybe want a career path similar to what I had at a teaching university. So all of
that.
[00:26:34] RORI: And you get to expand all the programs you've been running too. You get more energy there, but no, but not the teaching grind.
[00:26:40] LISA: Oh yeah.
Not the teaching. And I do feel like it's made me a better scientist. Well, and educators, because again, I'm working across a lot of disciplines now, trying to understand the science of others, especially life scientists. Because at first, I was like, I don't know, man. I gotta have it made over here. And things then that angered me, you know, still frustrate me now.
Um, the demographics of the undergraduates have obviously changed over the years. When my oldest sister was an undergraduate, that was before Prop 209. Although, She earned her place anyway by how accomplished she was. But yeah, they're only, I think it's 3 percent Black students now, which is unfortunate.
[00:27:23] EMILIA: I mean, I know that Berkeley has the lowest numbers of all the UCs.
[00:27:26] LISA: I know. And I'm, I'm so inspired by the growing Latino population. So that is a bright spot, but I've had Black students come to me and I'm not even a faculty member, but. Once I do meet a mentor, they sometimes feel unwelcome here, which is unfortunate. Yeah, just so few of them. Berkeley always has a plan and they're doing things with pre-college students and trying to get the African American alumni involved.
[00:27:51] RORI: I mean, you continue to do so much to change this on a field level. I looked up some of the programs that you have run over decades.
[00:27:58] EMILIA: And there's so many. Oh my God.
[00:28:00] RORI: So many. So there's like reaching out to communities and San Francisco, SF Rock. How do you come up with your acronyms? They're very good. You have very good program acronyms.
[00:28:10] LISA: And it drives me crazy just the acronym-driven times we live in. And I've been fortunate just, uh, working with others who are very much motivated to have the best acronym. But I've come up with a few myself.
[00:28:24] RORI: So collaborating with people is the answer. Some of these are classroom education programs, but a lot of them are non-classroom programs.
kind of educational opportunities. So what makes those non-classroom opportunities
important?
[00:28:37] LISA: Well, if I can share an example from my most recent one, STEMSEED, again, the acronyms, it's STEM Student Experiences Aboard Ships. So with NSF funding, we're partnering with the academic fleet of ships. So the dozen or so, uh, research universities.
in the states that have oceanographic institutions. So from Scripps Institution of Oceanography to Woods Hole to University of Washington and Columbia, Lamont Doherty. So all those large, uh, ocean science labs typically have a research vessel. And, uh, the vessels often are on loan from like, uh, NOAA. So we're able to
[00:29:21] EMILIA: like, go out and do research.
[00:29:23] LISA: Yep.
[00:29:23] EMILIA: Wow.
[00:29:24] LISA: So the ships are always moving around. Sometimes they have full parties on board, research scientists that are monitoring ocean currents or, uh, measuring, The chemistry of seawater, trying to monitor global change. And if there are empty bursts on the ship, then we're able to send students. They're typically shorter cruises.
So seven to 10 days as opposed to a whole month, but it's such a great. immersive experience and we welcome all majors. We say STEM curious is like the basic requirement. You might be majoring in journalism or
business.
[00:30:01] EMILIA: How do you advertise these things? Like do you photo people's classes?
[00:30:05] LISA: Well, so at conferences, you know, we have boosted and do recruiting and within the SACNAS network, so the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
So we're really trying to grow, you know, our network and footprint, um, within societies that cater to students of color. There are nearly 150 students. that have sailed over the seven years.
[00:30:32] RORI: I've designed some student programs. That's something that it's an important thing to me. And I'm curious when you're designing or joining a team on an existing program, like what do you think about?
[00:30:42] LISA: So with all of these years now of experience, I often approach new programs now with, okay, what haven't we done? What can we do differently or better, because it's not always working. I mean, if it's still the same percentage of students of color in geoscience. is when I started. So we're just, yeah, really trying to engage people differently, have conversations outside of the traditional disciplines, talking to social scientists to just help us take a fresh look at how we recruit.
Just really addressing the culture.
[00:31:19] RORI: Yeah. Getting those outside perspectives.
[00:31:22] LISA: I realize now that When I mentor students, whether it's in the field or not, I want to always think about their comfort level. When I was running SFROC, so Reaching Out to Communities and Kids with Science in San Francisco, so these great opportunities for high school students.
in San Francisco and in the Bay Area to come to the SF State campus, do lab-based research, come out in the field with us, and get to know college students. We begin to introduce students to earth science opportunities outside of the regional areas where they live. So these were these big field trips to Yellowstone and, The parks of Southern Utah and the Grand Canyon, you name it, we were on a mission to have these students see some geology.
[00:32:12] RORI: And these are like SF high school students?
[00:32:15] LISA: Yes. So I bring the SF high school students and then we'd meet up with high school students from Texas, with students from New Orleans. So we'd all meet. In this particular year that I'll share this experience, we met in Utah and then we went to parks from there.
So, I had a whole trip mapped out on the way there. We're going to go through Idaho, and Wyoming. We're going to see all these classic spots. And I had shared with the parents and family members where we were taking and everything we were going to do. We had a guidebook for them that really broke everything down.
So I thought, you know, in plain terms, but we get to one of these spots, a river has cut into these dark rocks and it's like very dramatic. What you see there's a cliff and, um, It's kind of a, what geologists would call like a classic area where you have volcanic rocks being cut by a river. Okay. So, so excited to show students this stop.
So, we got there and, uh, one of the students asked me, was it real? Like of what we were seeing, is this real? And at first, I didn't even get the question. I was like, what? And then I found myself getting angry. It's like, oh, we spent all this NSF money. I did all this prep, gave you a guidebook, and showed your slides.
And we get to this outcrop and you're asking me if this is real. I'm like, what do you mean? Like a Disneyland where there are fake rocks. And so once I calmed down and the student explained, he said, well, I haven't seen really anything on this scale. I'm like, yes, that's right. Because nature will blow your mind.
I mean, it blew my mind. This is why we do this work. And I realized, well, a few lessons there for me as a professional, as a professor, as an instructor, is students don't always see things the way you do. It should go without saying, but it was very revealing that day. It's like, okay, so no, no matter how much I put in the guidebook, If you have not seen crazy landscapes like that, why wouldn't you ask if nature did this or not?
So it was a real opportunity to just talk about geologic time and the slowness of processes and how rocks can get carved that way, but it did make me rethink what we share with students before we go and just giving them more opportunities to sketch and comment and give feedback. And even though I found myself getting a little frustrated when the students first asked me that question.
I never put them down. I never responded in a way that the student didn't want to ask more questions because I never wanted to do that as a mentor. So unlike the mentor I had, that wasn't a big deal. But you know, it's like, no, you don't put anybody down. You try to meet somebody where they are. And the point of these programs anyway, is to introduce earth science on all these scales.
[00:35:03] RORI: Right, like the student clearly got inspired, like they couldn't believe that it was real. Your program was clearly effective by that question and I, yeah, it makes sense in those moments you gotta slow it down.
[00:35:15] EMILIA: I think it takes a lot of stamina and everything that you do I think takes stamina. So much work and it's like Rori mentioned earlier, it feels like an uphill battle.
Like what do you do to reinvigorate yourself?
[00:35:28] LISA: Talk to friends. We have a mean text thread going on with a group of about eight friends and now and we're all around the same age and in leadership roles now. One person on the text thread is an NSF program officer. Another one is So, we are the change makers, but we still need to vent.
[00:35:48] EMILIA: So, we want to ask you, if you could revise and resubmit something about a past experience or go a different pathway, what would that be?
[00:35:57] LISA: Um, so the kinds of fossils I study, diatoms, fossil plants, they make up a crazy volume of rocks. that we see even in California, so much that there's a quarry in Santa Barbara County of diatomite.
And to me, the fossils in them are terrific clues to past climate and ocean change. So in my training as a PhD student, I was mostly working with them on land, but there came an opportunity to go out on a major research expedition in the Japan Sea in the Pacific Ocean today. So here was this opportunity to go for two months.
on a research vessel where the seafloor sediments and then we bring them up and there are these labs on the ship where people like me look at fossils and then people that do geochemistry have their lab. So it's a great working environment. I was so excited to go. I knew there would be a percentage of scientists.
from Japan, and one of the leading diatom specialists from Japan was someone I was going to be on the ship with. So super excited to be part of this team, but he treated me pretty badly, not really responding to my suggestions. I didn't know what was going on. So it got to the point where. He was saying to others, because I had my spies, my friend who was a Japanese graduate student, I was like, what did he say?
What's he saying about me? I was doing like the secretary work because he wouldn't type up his reports and all this burden. came to me and I didn't really know how to speak up at that time and just say like I maybe I should have asked the graduate student to help mediate or something so I could have a conversation about what I was thinking but I was just trying to keep up with the work on the ship and this Japanese scientist was friends with my advisor so I took advice from someone whose personality was very different from mine this other graduate student who was on the ship she was watching the Diamant you And she said, like, just don't give him any more samples, or when we get back off the cruise, either, yeah, don't speak to him, or She was just, like, taking the hard line.
Either you need to tell him off, or just cut it off. And that wasn't my nature. I sh My nature would I have been to ask my advisor, will you help me just communicate a little bit better with this man so we can work together? But I listened and just kind of cut off the communication and collaborative work.
So then of course this senior scientist didn't put me on any of the research papers and yeah, kind of bad-mouthed me a little bit even more. And then it was just too late to repair the relationship and it just, it bothered me for a lot of years. I, of course. was frustrated by the way I was being treated, and it certainly wasn't my fault, but for someone early in their career, it's like, Oh, I would have liked to have been on a research paper with him.
[00:38:57] RORI: It would have made a big difference.
[00:38:59] LISA: Yeah. So that just haunted me for a little bit, even though I had plenty of professional accomplishments that were being counted towards promotion and tenure. When I got to SF State, but, uh, there were some of the lessons learned there were to just be careful of advice you get from others.
[00:39:19] RORI: Oh, yeah.
[00:39:20] LISA: You know, just be true to yourself about how you handle a conflict. And most times I clearly move forward and try not to overthink. But if I could do one thing over I would have figured out early on in my career, like a way to just, um, try to mitigate a situation in, um, but by a method that is comfortable to me.
[00:39:44] RORI: I mean, this has been such a pleasure, Dr. White, Lisa White. Thank you so much. For sharing your wisdom, for sharing your stories with us today.
[00:39:55] EMILIA: Yeah.
[00:39:55] RORI: We're very grateful.
[00:39:57] LISA: You are welcome. My pleasure.
[00:40:00] EMILIA: And your stories are very inspiring and I think are going to be really motivating to a lot, a lot of our listeners and to us.
[00:40:07] LISA: I appreciate you say this.
[00:40:09] RORI: Absolutely. They're going to echo in my head too.
[00:40:12] EMILIA: Dr. Lisa White is a force. She overcame much more than she should have had to. as she navigated racist and misogynist interactions as a student and as faculty. We hope you feel motivated and inspired by the way she persisted and the change she has created.
For more discussion, check out the bonus episode.
[00:40:32] RORI: Thank you for listening to this episode. If you like what you heard, share it with someone.
[00:40:36] EMILIA: You can also support this program by writing a kind review if your listening platform allows
it.
[00:40:42] RORI: This episode was produced and edited by Maribel Quezada Smith, and sound engineering by Keegan Stromberg.
Special thanks to Dr. Lisa White. The hosts of Science Wise are Emilia Huerta Sanchez and me, Rori Rolfs.